Paris Hyatt Hotel housekeepers go on strike

Staff at the five-star Park Hyatt Paris Vendôme Hotel are striking over low pay and poor working conditions, a dispute the hotel said was between the workers and their subcontractor.

Some 60 housekeeping staff and valets at Paris prestigious Park Hyatt Paris Vendôme Hotel went on strike and took to the streets Friday under the banner: “The class war starts here.”

The staff, for the most part sub-contractors for service agency La Française de Service, are demanding pay rises, better working conditions and to become become employees of the Hyatt Group.

They have been joined by seven members of the hotel staff, who are also complaining about working conditions at the luxurious five-star establishment in Paris’s up-market Second Arrondissement.

“Hyatt’s management says that this problem is entirely between the staff and the sub-contractor, but this is manifestly not true,” said Harold Kreyder, a hotel valet and and representative of the CGT union, under whose banners the strikers were demonstrating.

“There is a significant number of other Hyatt colleagues who support this action, but they fear company reprisals,” he added.

The hotel’s management insisted Friday that it had nothing to do with the employees’ complaints.

“Park Hyatt Paris Vendôme has nothing to do with this conflict, which is entirely between the employees and the subcontractor,” it said in a statement. “Obviously we regret this situation but we do not wish to interfere with a matter that is strictly our sub-contractor's business.

“We hope that this matter is resolved quickly, through dialogue with the employees, and in the interest of all parties, so that the services the sub-contractor is engaged to provide our customers can resume.”